Day 5 - BBQ

Today saw the second session of our trip. With the Gandyman now out here in Portugal it would definitely be a session where people would try to impress, with BUCS looming on the horizon, and George only being here for a week. Those of us doing the 5k session started at 10, with a 2k rep at 5k pace, just like on Tuesday. 10 minutes later the main session started, which was 700, 200, 600, 200, 500, 200, 400 all off 90sec recovery, with the reps getting faster throughout the session. Unfortunately for me, my heel wasn’t feeling too great, and so I had to stop after the 2k. I was pretty down about this, but George said not to worry about it and just get ready for Tuesday (the next session). I stayed around and stretched whilst the rest of the guys did the session, Emery in particular running very well. The track was rammed this morning, with around 7+ groups training on it, as it closes at 12 on a Saturday. At 10 a few of John Nuttall’s group and some of the Liverpool lads were doing a huge volume session, whilst we also saw Phil Nicholls doing what looked like 400’s and Ben Moreau doing some longer reps. At 11 Liz McColgan’s group were doing 800’s and a small but high quality group from Blackburn (my brother, Alison Leonard, Karl Billington and Anthony Hauserman) were doing 300’s.

As soon as I got back, I went to see Leslie and Tom for a bit of ‘emergency treatment’ to see if they could sort my heel out. There weren’t massaging today as it is their rest day, so I was very lucky that they agreed to take a quick look at me. Between them they loosened off my IT-Band and Peronial Tendon, and this really seemed to help the pain in my heel straight away. I cannot say how thankful I was and I really do owe them one! After the treatment I got lunch whilst watching the United-Chelsea game. This was always going to be horribly tense as Mariani is a Chelsea fan, and Fairbourn a big United fan (oh and Griff pretends he’s a big United fan!). We all know the result, but it didn’t quite kill the atmosphere in the villa as much as I anticipated for...

Earlier on in the week we were invited to the 9 person L’boro villa down by the track for a BBQ. We couldn’t pass up on this offer, and so rocked up at 6pm with all our food. Everyone who has come away with L’boro was there, and despite the wait for food (obviously going to happen when catering for over 30 people) it was good. I smashed 2 burgers and a couple of sausages along with a bit of the pasta that Besty and the girls had laid on! This was most definitely the most full I have been since coming out here! Our house left quite early however, as we wanted to go down to the Marina. We watched the David Haye fight in Figo’s bar, with a large Liverpool AC contingency, before heading on to Rui’s Karaoke bar again. The DJ tonight was awful, which ruined it, as he had the wrong backing tracks playing and all sorts. The company was great but it really was a shambles which got worse when a John Smiths shandy set me back 5 euro’s 50! Never again!